Impact of Cash Support to Drought Affected Households’ Food Security and Coping Strategies: The Case of Meiso Woreda, Oromia Region, Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2023-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Food security remain as the major challenges to achieve economic development in Ethiopia where drought is one of the key driving factors for food insecurity. The scaling up of humanitarian cash assistance in recent years has been significant. Therefore, the study was conducted to assess the Impact of the cash support to drought affected Household food security status and coping strategies of Meiso woreda. Accordingly, data were collected from 280 sample households selected using multistage sampling method. Besides, focus group discussion and key informant interview were used to collect data to triangulate the questionnaire survey. Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Food Consumption Score (FCS) were used to determine the food security status of households while ordered logistic regression model were used to analyze the determinant factors which affect food security of sampled household. Moreover, a Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was applied to assess the impact of the cash on household food security status. The result of the HFIAS shows that out of the total surveyed households, approximately 11% households were categorized as food secure, 20% as mildly food insecure, 66% as moderately food insecure and 4% as severely food insecure. On the other hand, the FCS results indicated that 58% of HHs are under acceptable food consumption whereas 26% and 16 % of HHs are under borderline and poor food consumption category respectively. The ordinal logistic regression model revealed that independent variables namely, cash beneficiary household, livestock holding, female livestock ownership, income generating activities, total annual income and access to credit were found to be statistically significant predictor for household food security. Majority or 79% percent of the food insecure households have used emergency coping strategies to combat food shortage and meet their immediate needs. According to the average treatment effect (ATT) on treated, the cash intervention has a positive and significant influence on household food security status where the difference between treatment and control group is 14.7%. Based on the findings, the author recommends the cash support to be strengthened as medium solution, facilitate access to credit, creating employment opportunities to increase the total income of the household and enhancing the livestock production.
Description
Keywords
Food insecurity, determinants, coping mechanisms, cash transfer humanitarian support